Tuesday, November 6, 2012

“When I’m not writing…” with Chrysoula Tzavelas

Today’s guest is Chrysoula Tzavelas, author of MATCHBOX GIRLS, the first book in her urban fantasy series. On her website, she describes the books like this: “It’s a contemporary fantasy that takes more from Neil Gaiman than Laurell K. Hamilton, about a battle between celestial forces and the people caught in the middle.” Keep reading to see what Chrysoula does when she’s not writing!

I have two kids! One of them is an extremely intelligent and also autistic five-year-old and one of them is a highly active, already-trying-to-walk eight-month-old. They take up a lot of time all by themselves. Primarily, my life for the last six months has been writing+kids+household maintenance, but I’ve found time to squeeze in a few other entertainments.

–Gardening: Every summer for the last decade or so, I’ve had a vegetable garden. This summer, I expanded beyond my usual tomato-pumpkin-zucchini into green beans and snow peas. That worked out really well! I’m definitely doing it again next year. My eldest hates the outdoors, but my youngest already loves it, so I’m hoping next summer I’ll have a little helper.

–Reading fiction: I don’t read as much fiction as I’d like, because I have problems going to bed at night when I’m caught up in a book I’m enjoying. I like to read urban fantasy, epic fantasy, and some manga. (I usually include the YA I like under urban fantasy, too, because often the story elements that attract me are similar.)

–Reading stuff on the internet: I do far too much of this. I used to have an addiction to TVTropes, but I’ve developed a resistance after repeated exposure. But I can still get pulled into reading random articles on Wikipedia, random blog posts, random comment threads and even random dictionary browsing at the drop of a hat. It’s amazing how much time I lose to this.

–TV: I never used to watch TV–we don’t even have TV service anymore–but once I had my second child, I started watching streaming TV with my housemate and husband. For awhile, it was every night, but we dropped down to a few nights a week once I declared “maternity leave” over (at about six weeks) and started writing again. I mostly watch anime with my housemate. We’ve gone through a number of good recent shows and I’ve been very inspired as a result. With my husband, I tend to watch American TV–we watched a few seasons of Stargate and we’ve watched pilots of a number of other shows, as well as some movies.

–Games: Games! I love games. I’ve playing in a couple of intermittent tabletop (OK, Google Hangout) RPGs, and I promised myself I could pick up a new MMO after I finished the sequel to Matchbox Girls. That happened recently, so I actually had to pull myself away from making a new character in Guild Wars 2 to write this post.

You know, looking at this list, it’s no wonder I’m chronically short on sleep…

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Thanks for visiting us, Chrysoula, as part of your blog tour!

For more information about Chyrsoula and her books, check out her website or follow her on Twitter.

To see Chrysoula’s other stops, click on the tour button below.

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Here’s the scoop on MATCHBOX GIRLS:

Marley Claviger is just trying to get her life together. Stumbling into an ancient conflict between celestial forces is going to make that a whole lot harder… When Marley wakes up to a phone call from a pair of terrified children, she doesn’t expect to be pulled into a secret war.

She rescues them from an empty house and promises to find their missing uncle. She even manages to feed them dinner. But she barely feels competent to manage her own life, let alone care for small children with strange, ominous powers… And when a mysterious angelic figure shows up and tries to claim the girls, it all falls apart…

Plagued by visions of disaster, Marley has no idea what she’s gotten herself into, but she knows one thing: magical or not, the kids need her.

Do you guys have suggestions for who you’d like to see featured on the blog? If so, you can make your suggestions on this page. No guarantees that your favorite authors will be able to participate but we’ll try!

Authors, would you like to visit and share with us? Please email me at jennblogs (at) gmail (dot) com and we’ll set it up!